This article is partially suggested by Trump calling the mainstream media (MSM) “an enemy of the people.” This has forced media, reluctantly I should say, into being more objective than they usually are, and more openly oppositional, than is their wont. Normally the MSM work more in concert with the White House, Congress, and the US Supreme Court, than they do so openly opposed to the utterances of those institutions, but by being called as the enemy so adamantly and often, and Trump et al so far out of step with easily verifiable facts so much, they have been shoved into a position they are not used to. One has only to go back to the New York Times’ Judith Miller’s case and Bush’s phony and illegal rush to war on Iraq to see this, or their fawning role re: Obama, to understand this.

With the notable exception of Fox News and people like Rush Limbaugh, who live in an alternative universe, driven mainly by resentment and a (unwarranted) sense of persecution, and not by facts, are having their day and have had their day … for yet awhile. But when people like Flynn start testifying, whether that is before a Congressional Committee or not, the right-wing’s news media filter will fall away, at least for some, because Flynn et al’s testimony become live news events in their own right, and less subject to the right-wing’s spin.

It is that where facts bump against the fabricated reality, and one side or the other’s going to prevail and I’m going to tell you why it has come to this. Trump himself has set himself up to take such a big fall by calling so many things “fake news” and denying so many obvious things, such as his and his family’s long and deep history with Russia. As I have said time and again, eventually he will no longer be able to deny his playing into Putin’s hands. Because what is really at stake here is the US’ continued role as the sole imperialist superpower and it can’t be that with Trump or even Pence in charge. The Empire doesn’t just run itself, and Trump in particular cannot administer it because to administer it requires highly developed bureaucracies, and bureaucracies run on written documents. Trump is pre-literate and his style is chaotic because he doesn’t read and probably has never read a whole book his entire adult life. Literacy is one of humankind’s great achievements, and we are working with someone so antediluvian because he doesn’t read and can’t.

There is a feedback mechanism between the written draft or page and the brain. Our thinking process becomes more sophisticated because of it. By externalizing what we are thinking, we can then see and examine the page what we are thinking and come to modify it thereby. This makes us better thinkers and writers but without that back and forth process, we are left impoverished intellectually. Pence is experienced compared to Trump, but he was head of the Transition Team, so the Russian issue should bring him down too.

By being so obviously contemptuous of facts and by being so extreme, Trump has managed to give them both a bad name. Do you remember how Hitler gave eugenics a bad name but it was at its height in America before the Nazis got ahold of it. Ditto what Trump has done about sexism, white supremacy and the presidency. The genesis and growth of Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo owes Trump some of their lasting power. Their removal probably won’t come via impeachment because impeachment takes too long and we will not survive that long. I have previously pointed out that several months ago the British and Israelis publicly said they would no longer share sensitive intelligence with the US because of Trump’s cavalier attitude towards state secrets - he sees them as merely something to brag about rather than to be protected. Do you think given just that alone that the empire can long tolerate that?